Scrambling Scripture

Denis Alexander and original sin

Published: 24 January 2012(GMT+10)

According to Dr Alexander, St. Augustine and the Council of Carthage were wrong
in teaching that human mortality is the consequence of the Fall. Painted by Sandro
Botticelli: Wikipedia.org

Denis Alexander is one of the UK’s leading theistic evolutionists. As an accomplished
molecular biologist and Director of the prestigious Faraday Institute,1 he holds a prominent and influential position within
the evangelical Christian community, and his book Creation or evolution: do we have
to choose?2,
reviewed here and
here,3 has undoubtedly
influenced many.

A few days before Christmas, he published an article in The Guardian4 in which he admitted that
belief in evolution is incompatible with the doctrine of original sin. Since humanity
evolved through the deaths of countless chimp/human intermediates, he claimed, it’s
clear that death preceded human existence and sin. How, then, can it be said that
evolution is compatible with the Bible? According to Dr Alexander, the answer is
very straightforward—there is no doctrine of original sin in scripture. “Nowhere”
he argued, “does the Bible teach that physical death originates with the sin
of Adam, nor that sin is inherited from Adam.”

Dr Alexander’s view is that Adam’s sin led to spiritual death,
rather than physical death. According to Alexander, “Nowhere in the
Old Testament is there the slightest suggestion that the physical death of either
animals or humans, after a reasonable span of years, is anything other than the
normal pattern ordained by God for this earth.”5 How can he, as a professing evangelical Christian,
make such a bizarre claim? Part of God’s judgement upon Adam’s sin was
that he would ‘return to the ground’. ‘You
are dust’, God said, ‘and to dust you will
return’ (Gen. 3:19). This clearly refers to physical death.

According to Dr Alexander, ‘Nowhere does the Bible teach that physical death
originates with the sin of Adam, nor that sin is inherited from Adam.’

Physical death is something horrible. It robs children of parents and wives of husbands;
it leads to years of heart-rending, choking, soul-destroying grief; it is often
preceded by untold suffering, and terrorises those who face it. How can anyone seriously
believe that physical death was part of God’s original perfect creation? Physical
death is the terrible consequence of the abomination of sin. Why did Jesus weep
at the tomb of Lazarus? We are told that ‘he was deeply
moved in spirit and troubled’ (John 11:34, 35). The Greek word translated ‘deeply
moved’ is embrimaomai and indicates not only grief but rage.6 Jesus was enraged by sin and
death, this dreadful business that had invaded His perfect world.

The apostle Paul contends, ‘the wages of sin is death’
(Rom 6:23). That this refers to physical death as well as
spiritual death is clear from a consideration of why Christ had to die physically.
In 1 Corinthians 15:21, the same apostle wrote, ‘For
since death came through a man [Adam], the resurrection of the dead comes also though
a man [Christ].’ If Adam only died spiritually, Christ would
have only needed to rise spiritually.

Jesus was enraged by sin and death, this dreadful business that had invaded His
perfect world.

Original sin is scriptural

When Adam spurned God’s love, and disobeyed Him by eating from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:1-6), he lost his perfectly righteous nature. He
became guilty of sin and became morally corrupt. The doctrine of original sin holds
that we all inherit both Adam’s guilt and his corrupt nature. The Westminster
Shorter Catechism states, ‘all mankind, descending from [Adam] by ordinary
generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression.’7

The apostle Paul’s discussion of death in Romans 5:12-14 is most relevant here:

‘Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one
man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all
sinned—To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin
is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless,
death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did
not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.’

Paul’s point is that death is the consequence of breaking God’s laws
and that alone. Since those who lived before the Mosaic law also died, they must
have transgressed another law. As no other law like the Mosaic law had been given,
this could only have been the commandment given to Adam not to eat from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. Clearly they must have broken this law ‘in
Adam’ as they had not been born when Adam sinned. And, according to the apostle
Paul, the final proof that this is true is that they physically died. Indeed, Paul
argues, ‘by the trespass of the one man, death reigned
through that one man’ (Rom. 5:17), and ‘in Adam all die’
(1 Cor. 15:22).

This principle, that we partake in the actions of our forebears, whether in doing
right or wrong, is also clear from other scriptures. In Luke 11:50–51, Jesus considered the Pharisees guilty
of their ancestors’ sin in murdering the prophets:

‘Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets,
and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of
what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.
Because of this, God in his wisdom said, “I will send them prophets and apostles,
some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.” Therefore this
generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been
shed since the beginning of the world.’

In Exodus 20:5 God states that He will punish ‘the children
for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation’. In Hebrews 7:7–10, Levi is understood to have paid a
tithe to Melchizedek as, although not yet born, he was considered to have been ‘in
the body of his ancestor’ Abraham, when Abraham paid the tithe.

This is not to suggest, of course, that we are not judged for our own sin as well.
Indeed, ‘The soul who sins is the one who will die’
(Ezekiel 18:4). However, these passages make clear that the
individualism now so prominent in the thinking of many is a far cry from the biblical
view of humanity.

Original sin is foundational

The doctrine of original sin, attacked now even from
within the church, explains why the world is as it is today, with all its
wars, disease, misery and despair. It explains why we all die, including newborn
babies, who may suffer as much as the worst of sinners. The Psalmist writes, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). This is not teaching that the act of spousal
union is sinful, as some have suggested. Rather, the Psalmist is referring to ‘original
sin and corruption, derived to him by natural generation … as soon as soul
and body were united together, sin was in him, and he was in sin, or became a sinful
creature’.8

Moreover, the doctrine of original sin makes clear that man and not God is responsible
for all this. The death and suffering in this present world is God’s righteous
judgment upon sin. God’s original creation was perfectly good and did not
include suffering and death (Gen. 1:31), either of humans or
of animals. It was like the world as it will be when Christ restores
it. The imagery used in prophetic allusions to that future restoration denies any
suggestion that the restored Earth could include the savagery and carnivory seen
in today’s animal kingdom. Rather, they are reminiscent of Eden before the
Fall. Isaiah writes that ‘the wolf will live with the
lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling
together’ (Is. 11:6). Echoes of this Edenic state
are seen even today.

Biblical doctrine, based on biblical history, matters; and it is only a scripturally
sound understanding of the doctrine of original sin that can provide a
sure foundation for the doctrine of salvation. ‘For just
as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so
also through the obedience of the one man [Christ] the many will be made righteous’
(Rom. 5:19).

Gill, J., John Gill’s exposition of the Bible;
http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/psalms-51-5.html.
Return to text.

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Readers’ comments

Judie S.,Australia, 24 January 2012

If Denis Alexander were right about Adam’s sin only bringing physical death, and Romans 5 says that “death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses”, that would mean that everyone from Adam to Moses, including Abraham, was spiritually dead. Which can’t be right, considering the number of people of that era in the Hebrews list of witnesses.

Ryan S.,Canada, 25 January 2012

“Why did Jesus weep at the tomb of Lazarus?”

Do you think that if Jesus knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead in a few minutes that He would weep for him or weep because of the effects of death? Jesus even waited until Lazarus would be really dead before traveling to him.

The best interpretation that fits the account is that Jesus wept because of the lack of faith of the people. Note the preceeding text, “When Jesus saw her weeping and the people who had come with her weeping, He was deeply distressed …” It was because of the people’s response that Jesus was moved.

Editor responds

While, I am sure it is true that Jesus’ deep distress was partly due to the hardness of people’s hearts, this and his grief over Lazarus’ death are not mutually incompatible. This is part of the mystery (i.e. we humans cannot fully comprehend it) of the Incarnation of Christ. As fully man, he was genuinely tempted in every way as we are (“in all points”), yet without sin (Heb. 4:15). He genuinely struggled and had to endure the hostility and opposition of sinful people (Heb. 12:3). And He genuinely wept over the loss that he (and others) felt over physical death of a friend—notwithstanding that he knew he would raise him. He felt keenly the effects of those infirmities suffered by his fellow humans beings and genuinely sympathised with their weaknesses (Heb. 4:15).

While the lack of faith of those He encountered (as in this account) was surely a component of Jesus’ grief, it is certainly not the full explanation. I would respectfully submit that, in trying to comprehend (with our finite human minds) the amazing mystery that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, it is important that we don’t risk sanitising the Christ of the NT. As Dominic wrote in the article, to do so hardly squares with the force of the original Greek word, translated “grief”. Moreover, the Lord, the giver of life, will one day subjugate death fully and permanently (1 Cor. 15:25–26)—He, it is, who we can look to for solace as one who genuinely experience being ‘in our shoes’.

Jeannette P.,United Kingdom, 30 January 2012

My father died during the time I was in college as a mature student. Some time later one of the students (a Christian) said that death was simply a natural part of life.

While agreeing that a believer doesn’t need to fear dying. I asked him, “Have you ever seen anyone die?” He answered “No” I replied, “If you had you wouldn’t say that.”

Even if you know the person is with the Lord physical death is an ugly thing, and surely not part of God’s original creation, or according to His perfect will.

Joe F.,United States, 1 February 2012

Why is it that, with some people, the Bible never says what it plainly states? The doctrine of original sin didn’t fall from the clouds. It developed directly from scripture, as this article shows. The only reason for these theological gymnastics is the determination of men to make God in their own image. After all these years, the serpent still says, "Did God really say …?" And it still works.